As we mark the 77th year of the ongoing Nakba in occupied Palestine, Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition affirms that the Palestinian people will bring this Nakba to an end, and that our return is coming. This year, we once again mark the Nakba amid the extreme violence of Zionist genocide in Palestine, particularly in Gaza. As we remember the Nakba and pledge to remain on the road to liberation, as we mourn our martyrs and raise the names of our destroyed villages, we are committed to organize, act and struggle here.

We are joining the call to action for May 17 as a day of action to mark the ongoing Nakba and demand an end to the genocide, and we will be actively participating in every city where Al-Awda is active. We urge all Al-Awda members, supporters, our community and the friends of Palestine to participate in all of these actions in your city, campus or town. We must take the streets today, tomorrow, this weekend and continuously until we bring the genocide in Gaza to an end, impose an arms embargo on the Zionist entity – and until we see a free Palestine from the river to the sea, with our people returning home. 

On this solemn occasion, we honor the testimonies of Palestinians who recall the stories of the over 750,000 Palestinians forcibly expelled from their lands between 1947 and 1948; the 530 destroyed villages throughout the land of Palestine, and we remember the martyrs of the massacres from Deir Yassin to Dawayima. We honor every key to a stolen home in the hand of every Palestinian who dreams of return, from the refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, to every child born in exile and diaspora taught the name of their village and their rights to their land from birth.

The Nakba is not an event of the past. It is an ongoing process—of land theft, siege, forced displacement, imprisonment, and genocide—that continues to this day. Today, in Gaza, the ongoing Nakba – the bombs of the Zionist regime, armed and funded by the United States, with every American taxpayer footing the bill for genocide, for the bombing of schools, mosques, hospitals and refugee camps – has taken the lives of over 53,000 martyrs, with over 130 Palestinians massacred just today in Gaza. It has wounded over 120,000 Palestinians and displaced over two million people from their homes.

Entire neighborhoods have been leveled. Hospitals have been bombed. Famine has been deliberately engineered. And still, the people of Gaza – and the Palestinian people everywhere – resist.

On this day, we emphasize that for 77 years, the Palestinian people have never accepted exile as fate, and we will not do so today. The demands of Netanyahu and Trump to push Palestinians from Gaza have found nothing but absolute refusal despite the massacres and the bitter starvation imposed upon our people. We have not and will never surrender our right to our homes, our land, and our return. The keys carried by our grandparents are held today by the children and grandchildren of the camps, in Gaza and the West Bank, and throughout the diaspora, including the cities of the United State. Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition reaffirms that the right to return is not a mere slogan or a dream—it is an inalienable, non-negotiable right, collective and individual, enshrined in international law and rooted in justice.

In the West Bank today, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from the refugee camps, particularly in Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas. The Zionist regime has blown up and destroyed hundreds of homes in the camps, at the same time that it is invading UNRWA schools to shut them down and attempting to impose a new land registration and confiscation scheme in “Area C.” All of these attacks aim to destroy the refugee camps and the identity of the Palestinian people that holds fast to return and liberation of our homes, lands and properties.

Inside the occupation’s prisons, over 10,000 Palestinians are detained, more than a third of them without charge or trial under “administrative detention.” Torture, humiliation, and medical neglect are daily tools of repression. Dozens of prisoners have been martyred in recent months alone.

As the United States rushes to arm the Zionist state for genocide—sending bombs, shielding it from accountability, and criminalizing Palestinian life and speech—the people of this country and the world are rising up for Palestine. Everywhere, the flag flies proudly and the call is clear: Free Palestine. End the genocide. Our people will return home. The world rejects Zionism.

Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, affirms:

• The right of return for all Palestinian refugees and displaced persons to their original homes and lands is absolute, non-negotiable, and must be implemented in full.
• Palestine is Arab land, from the river to the sea, and the Palestinian people—inside occupied Palestine, in exile, and in the diaspora—are one people with one cause: liberation and return.
• There can be no justice without the dismantling of the Zionist settler-colonial regime and the creation of a liberated Palestine on our entire homeland, with Jerusalem as its capital.
• The Palestinian resistance in all its forms is a legitimate expression of the right of a colonized people to struggle for freedom.
• International solidarity is not charity—it is duty. And today, that duty includes action: boycott, divestment, sanctions, direct action, defense of Palestinian voices, and unrelenting pressure to demand an arms embargo now and end the genocide.

On this 77th commemoration of the Nakba, we do not mourn alone. We rise with every child who still holds the name of their village close, and every elder who has never ceased to teach the map of our homeland, the path of return..

From exile to return. From occupation to liberation. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.